The Big Sky (1952)

Arthur Hunnicutt: Zeb Calloway

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Quotes 

• Zeb Calloway : Blackfeet... proud injuns. They ain't gonna let no white man spile their country. The only thing they'a feared of is a white man's sickness.

  Boone Cardell : What's that?

  Zeb Calloway : Grabs. White men don't see nothing pretty unless they want to grab it. The more they grab, the more they want to grab. It's like a fever and they can't get cured. The only thing for them to do is to keep on grabbin' until everything belongs to white men and then start grabbin' from each other. I reckon injuns got no reason to love nothing white.

• Zeb Calloway : [narrating]  Ain't it funny. Two men is friends. Then a girl comes along an... an pretty soon they ain't friends no more. And now with one of 'em walking out on what the other'n would give his right arm for, I kept wondering what they would do to settle it.

• Zeb Calloway : They ain't deservin' of it, but I guess we better bury 'em.

• Zeb Calloway : Keep you eyes open. If you see anything, shoot. Don't bother to aim because you probably couldn't hit nothing no how.

• 'Frenchy' Jourdonnais : Calloway, what do you think? Do you think they went away, huh?

  Zeb Calloway : They gone went. But the question is, will they stay gone went?

• Boone Cardell : Why did she want to grab this?

  Zeb Calloway : That's a Blackfoot scalp you got, and she knows it. Ain't you ever thought of why an injun takes a scalp?

  Jim Deakins : Why?

  Zeb Calloway : To shame an enemy. The way she figures it, there's a Blackfoot brave somewhere who can't show his face to the hereafter until that thing is buried under the ground.

• Boone Cardell : What's the noise about?

  Zeb Calloway : They're (Indians) celebrating your wedding.

  Boone Cardell : Wedding?

  Zeb Calloway : You maybe don't know it, but you're a married man now.

  Boone Cardell : Married? And I don't got nothing to say about it?

  Zeb Calloway : Wouldn't do you no good to say it.

• Zeb Calloway : I remember once there being a trapper named Parker. He run smack into a big grizzly bear. The bear sure made a mess out of Parker before we killed it. Ripped one of his ears clear off. But this child just happened to have a needle and some of this deer sinew, just like we got here. Yeah, while his ear was still hot, I picked it up and sewed it back on his head. And it growed most as good as ever.

  [and a little later] 

  Zeb Calloway : I said growed most as good as ever. Not hardly. It seems I sewed Parker's ear on backwards. Yeah, he hated me until the day he died, on account of every time he heared a rattlesnake, he'd turn the wrong direction and step smack into it!

• Jim Deakins : [Watching Boone play with the Indian scalp and annoyed with him for leaving Teal-Eye]  Playing with that scalp again. Whatd'ya give him that fer? That were a fool thing to do.

  Zeb Calloway : Worse than that, whole story were a lie.

  Jim Deakins : What!

  Zeb Calloway : His brother weren't killed by no injun atall, fell in the river and drowned.

  Jim Deakins : Huh... He wouldn't believe that!

  Zeb Calloway : Nobody would. I just talk too much.

• [while Jim was unconscious, Zeb and Boone amputated Jim's mangled finger] 

  Jim Deakins : Who's got it?

  Boone Cardell : Got what?

  Jim Deakins : My finger! What's a man going to do without his finger?

  Zeb Calloway : What do you want your finger for?

  Jim Deakins : Zeb Calloway, didn't you tell me an injun can't go to heaven unless he's whole? Didn't ya?

  Zeb Calloway : That's right, I did.

  Boone Cardell : You sure did.

  Jim Deakins : That's what I heard. It sounds right, too, don't it?

  Zeb Calloway : Sounds right.

  Boone Cardell : How can you go up there without your finger?

  Jim Deakins : That's what I'm saying! Who's got it? Who's got it? Fine thing to do to a friend!

• Zeb Calloway : Boone, this is Teal's father, Chief Red Horse. Chief Red Horse wants to see you on account he wants to know how much you're gonna pay for his daughter.

  Boone Cardell : Pay for Teal?

  Zeb Calloway : You married her, didn't ya? He gets paid.

  Boone Cardell : Well, I reckon that's the custom.

  Zeb Calloway : Well, yes and no. In this particular case, it's yes.

• Zeb Calloway : A man leaves when he ain't got nothin' to stay for.